Gratitude Is A Disease Of Dogs
by NhaTrang
Summary: When Draco Malfoy unexpectedly finds himself back at Hogwarts after a few years, just weeks before his glittering wizarding society marriage to the lovely young Astoria Greengrass, he finds a reception that will change his life forever and mold him into something ... different. Dark!Harry. Originally intended as a one-shot, but chapters are proliferating ...
1. Chapter 1

" _Ennervate_."

The world was pain. His head was pain, was fire. Agony touched his wrists, touched his ankles, and he couldn't focus.

A shaft of moonlight pierced the clouds. In its faint pallid glow, Draco Malfoy saw that he was in the Astronomy Tower. At ruddy _Hogwarts_. It had been years. He'd thought himself well shot of the blasted rockpile.

He was also half-naked, and his wrists and ankles securely shackled to one of the retaining stanchions. The night air was cold on his bare chest, and he noticed the goosebumps through his painful haze. Malfoy pulled at the bonds, experimentally – the metal was snug, and unyielding. The harsh cold stone raked at his back as he shifted.

A scrape, to one side, caught his arrested attention. Pushing off of a chair was a man. A woman coming up beside him. Another man, beside her.

Harry Potter. The bastard himself. And Daphne Greengrass. Neville Longbottom.

A more unlikely trio Draco couldn't imagine, and admitted to himself that he probably couldn't have imagined it even if he _hadn't_ just come out of a heavy Stupefy.

"You won't get away with this. Whatever it is," he panted. "Are you _thick_? We're at Hogwarts!"

"It's summer hols," replied Longbottom. "The students are gone. Term's not for a month."

"I'll – what if I scream?"

"Go ahead. Most of the teachers are gone. Hagrid's hut is a half-mile away, McGonagall sleeps like the dead, and Filch found himself a bottle of Diamond Mountain Private Reserve. Who's there to hear?" Longbottom shifted, leaning against a pillar. "And the only ghost in the Tower here is the Grey Lady. She doesn't much care for the cut of your jib. So I'm told."

"The –" He took a jagged breath, fighting for coherence. "The Aurors. They'll find out. Find me."

"Doubt it," Longbottom answered. "The fellow who snatched you was Obliviated. The fellow who he handed you to and did the Obliviating was a fugitive Death Eater with a Kiss-on-sight order, so sad. The fellow who did for _him_ was Obliviated. No trail."

Another deep breath. "What the _hell_ is this about, then?" Draco spat.

"Too many things," said Neville. Potter and Greengrass were quiet, had been quiet, and a tendril of unease came to Malfoy, as he wondered about a rumor or three he'd heard about them. "You hurt too many people. Terrorized too many people, made Hogwarts a hell in your time. You took the Mark. And now you've got some power. And you're invoking your marriage contract clause with Astoria Greengrass."

Damn him. _Damn him._ But he still had a shot. Malfoy turned his head towards Astoria's older sister, his brow knitted. "These two w-wankers are a lost cause. They've always had it in for me. Frigging Griffyndors. But what do YOU have against me? Her own sister?"

"You'd have no idea." Daphne spoke for the first time. Her voice was low, venomous, thick with a nameless emotion. "I wouldn't imagine you'd remember Margaret Slapin."

Who? He tried to focus on Greengrass, a golden blur in the dim light. "G-got it in o-one, bitch," he murmured, trying to steady himself, realizing that without quite knowing why that his future sister-in-law might be of no help. "Never heard of her."

"She was in the form behind ours. Quiet little thing. Muggleborn. I don't know why that ruddy duncecap sorted her into _our_ House of all places, but there you go." She shifted, leaning closer to Draco. "Of course your clique made her life a living hell, but she was tough. She stuck it out. I admired that."

"Hah. Did you. Not enough to do anything about it," Malfoy sneered. Good. As long as they were still talking and talking – these white light ponces never had the bollocks for more – he figured he had a chance. He sucked in another long breath, his heartbeat slowing.

Daphne shook her head. "No. I didn't. I was in Slytherin too, remember? Bravery not on our dance card?" She folded her arms, hunching inward slightly. "Nor on your wolfpack's. But then there was fourth year." The timbre of her voice changed. Even before, it still had the velvet quality that had drawn the Slytherin boys to try to melt – in vain, as it turned out – the "Ice Queen's" legendary defenses. Now she sounded more like crushed gravel might, were it given sound and volition.

"Slapin," murmured Neville. "I remember her. She was always decent t– "

She held up a hand to Longbottom, her shadowed gaze never once leaving Draco's face. "It was during the tournament. It was Tracey, Tracey and me that found her. Huddled in one of the empty classrooms." Daphne spat, paused, spoke again. "You'd taken turns with her. You and Goyle and Nott and Crabbe. All of you. More than once, each." A dismayed sound came from Longbottom, as he half-rose and drew back perceptibly. "And when you'd all gotten your end away, like you were in a knocking shop – you ... you let fly on her. All over her. Like she was your toilet. And used her school robes for your bogroll when you were done. And left her bleeding."

"That's why she dropped out," said Longbottom in an angry hiss. "I never knew." Potter said nothing, nothing at all throughout this. His arms were folded, a silent sentinel in the gloom.

"That's why she dropped out." She steepled her fingers, touching her fingertips to her lips. "And so much for Slytherin solidarity, yeah? Anyway." Daphne took a deep breath. "That's why I'm here. So you don't do to another girl what you did to her. Ever again."

"So, so that's what?" Malfoy let out a weak laugh, the burning in his wrists and back worsening. "You're going to m-murder me, is that it, you slapper, you and your two nancy boys?" His lips curled back in a half-snarl. "You don't have what it takes."

"We're not here to kill you." Harry Potter had finally spoken. Languidly, almost as if he were bored, as if he faced a tedious chore that nonetheless had to be finished before dinner and a pint.

"Knew it," murmured Draco.

Potter went on as if he hadn't heard Malfoy. "But not because we can't. I've killed. Neville's killed. We've done for better wizards than you." He shook his head. "No, it's not that. It's that –" Malfoy's vision cleared, and he looked into Potter's eyes with sure focus, for the first time. The stark, pitiless eyes of the Master of the Deathly Hallows. Potter leaned in towards the prisoner, a shock of hair falling across his brow. "I've spoken to dead folk, you know," Harry said quietly. "They've told me that dying doesn't really hurt. That's it's easy. That it's quick. I don't want that for you. Either easy _or_ quick."

"S-so." Malfoy took a breath, fighting for control, real fear icing his veins for the first time. "So it's to be torture then."

"Serve you ruddy right," muttered Neville. Animation came into Daphne's empty eyes, before she pursed her lips, turning to look at Harry.

"No. Your Death Wanker idea of fun, not mine. No. I'm not going to torture you." Potter reached behind him, and drew a dagger from a back sheath. He raised it before him, turning it this way and that, his gaze fixed on the play of moonlight on the shining metal.

"That – that was Aunt B-bella's knife!" Draco gasped, twisting in the shackles with a start. "Where did you get that?"

Iron laced Potter's voice as the dagger stopped moving in his grasp, and he raised his eyes back to Malfoy's. "From the belly of a friend. Your late aunt killed him with it. After using it to torture the dearest friend I'll ever have. Better than I ever deserved, anyway," Potter spat out. "Remember that day, do you?" Without taking his intent gaze off of Draco, he offered the knife to Daphne, who took it with an eager grin and murmured thanks. "Odd, innit? It's just plain steel. Not fancy, not enchanted, no magic in it. No magic made it. A Muggle knife. With your aunt. I wondered, sometimes. Anyway, Daph –"

"Thank you kindly, lover. I'll take it from here." Greengrass' voice was back to velvet, warm and slightly husky. "No. Neville'd never do this. And I don't even think Harry would."

"But we'll see it done," said Longbottom coolly.

"But they'll see it done," echoed Daphne. "Anyway, you'll never do that to another woman. No more women. For you, ever." She smiled brightly, starting to cut off his trousers with the keen blade, as a suddenly terrified Draco tore at his bonds, crying out incoherently. The fabric fell to the floor in ruined strips, and she reached down with the knife, sliding the wicked point under his manhood, lifting it slightly. She crooked her head, gazing down at it, pursing her lips, and bobbed it up with the knife a couple times. "No better than it ought to be," she bubbled, her tone suddenly summer-bright.

Anger shot through Potter's voice, the first emotion he'd shown. "And this is how we're doing it," he growled, loathing contorting his features. "Not like a wizard might. Not with a curse. This'll happen to you the Muggle way. Like they'd do a **farm animal**. Voldemort branded you like one, now we're treating you like one. A thing. To be – well. You know."

"NOOOOOO ... !" Draco screamed, spittle flying from his lips as Daphne bent over him, lifting his flaccid member in her gloved hand. "I'm a Malfoy, Merlin, I'm a _MALFOY_ –"

"The very last," smiled Neville.

His eyes bulging in terror and horror, Draco surged forward as far as the shackles would let him. This was really a trick, wasn't it? Dumbledore's ponce stooge would never do this for real! "You c-can't! Can't do this t-to me! My mother saved your filthy l-life! You know that! Pott – HARRY!"

"Only because Narcissa wanted something from me," Harry snapped back. "She got it. And I let her walk in the end. I owe her nothing. I owe **you** less than nothing."

He nodded curtly to Daphne, who smiled winsomely back at him. "Thank you, love," she purred.

The kiss of the blade was fire, was jagged ice, was pain unimaginable. He was aware, barely, at the wet sound as what she had severed from his loins fell onto the stone floor with a sodden ***** plop *****. Someone was howling, the victim of an anguish worse than the Cruciatus, and Malfoy dimly recognized that he was the screamer. A flash of amber spellfire, as Longbottom aimed his wand at the ruined stump, a faint grimace on his angular face ...

Draco had no idea how long he'd been writhing, his body wracked, his throat scoured with screaming. A bottle tilted to his lips, and he drank, gulping, eagerly, not even questioning whether it was poison ... or worse. The easing of his throat pain was almost as sharp as the knife had been, and he stared blankly at Harry Potter, not daring to look down to see if it was true. If what had been done to him was real.

Potter nodded, lowering the bottle. "There. That's for the blood loss. Neville saw that you wouldn't bleed out. You'll live. We want you to." He reached up with a cloth, wiping the spittle and blood from Draco's bitten-through lip. "Of course, the special herb Nev put in that potion will ensure that what we just cut off of you can't be regrown with magic. Ever. But you have to take the rough with the smooth."

"Noooooo," Malfoy sobbed, shaking his head.

"Yessssss," retorted Harry, starting to wipe the blade clean on the shreds of Malfoy's trousers before shrugging and letting it drop to the floor with a metallic clatter. "Reckon I won't need to keep that around any longer," he said. "Dobby'd have appreciated the symmetry. Anyway, you're going to live. Daph, you've got cleanup, yeah?"

In the back of the chamber, Greengrass was tying a stained leather pouch to the leg of an owl, murmuring something about a present for Margaret, before nodding to Potter. "Sure, darling. You boys go off now. I'll tie up the last string and kip right along. Curry for dinner?"

"Smashing. Come on, Nev." Harry leaned over to give her a quick, promissory kiss, before the men left.

"Poor dears," said Daphne calmly. "Men have a tough enough time watching this sort of thing. I'm sure they wouldn't want to see the denouement." She waved her wand, and the restraints vanished like mist. Malfoy fell heavily to the floor, sprawled face-down, with a cry of pain. His arms and legs were molten; he could not move save to quiver. She picked up his robes from the chair on which they'd been thrown, glancing at his naked pale form, before replacing them.

"Won't be needing those. So, no more contract: inability to sire children and all, automagically voided, too bad. Tori's safe from you. In any event, there's this _darling_ fellow, rich Muggle, comes from one of those beastly tiny kingdoms in Arabia somewhere. He just _loves_ your type, but not unbroken in. If you know what I mean. And I happen to know that Tracey owns a Pensieve. We'll have something to show Margaret."

Through his anguish, Draco scarcely comprehended her words, and certainly not her meaning. At the tower stairs were footsteps, and a large, bulky form filled his swimming vision. Goyle. Greg Goyle. How could _he_ be working for Potter's gang?

It was at that point that Draco realized that Goyle was naked ... and massively erect. His eyes were blank, glazed, uncomprehending, as he circled around Malfoy's contorted form.

"Just lovely what the Imperius will do to a man, yeah? Go ahead, Goyle, there he is. Do it!"

Without seeing it, Malfoy felt Goyle kneel on the cold stone behind him, and his former henchman's bloated form coming down on top of him.

" **NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"**


	2. Theodore: Division 2 Agonistes

_Author's Note: I'd intended Chapter 1 as a one-shot, but bowing to some requests to write more of that tale, I'm presenting 150-word drabbles of the dramatis personae._

* * *

Trying to ignore the clamor, the man sat at the bar, his grimy, twitching fingers curled around the chipped mug.

"No one likes us, no one likes us ..."

He should have run. Farther than Queer Street, right enough. He knew that. But sod that, they'd find him anyway. Wouldn't they.

"No one likes us, we don't care ..."

Wouldn't matter, being surrounded. Goyle'd been in a crowd. So had Malfoy. One slap with a Portkey, pfft.

"We are Millwall, super Millwall ..."

Damn Muggles were too soused to need Obliviating anyway. The half-breeds and blood traitors running the Ministry now wouldn't bother anyway. They didn't give a toss for the old ways, the _true_ ways.

Fuck it. As long as they didn't do to him what they did to Goyle before they let him die. He was too tired to care.

Would the bleeders stop **singing**?

"We are Millwall, from the Den!"


	3. Daphne: The Wedding Of The Year

Every head turned to watch her.

Step by step, radiating the controlled energy of a dancer, down the polished green-veined marble. Her tapered fingers glided over the gold bannister.

This was hers. It was _all_ hers. The candelabras of Green River Manor shone with warm crystalline light – but none as warm as her smile.

It may have been false. All a haze of illusion, the foundations sunk deep into golden quicksand. But still her world, and she loved it dearly.

Her escort – Rick? Rod? – waited at the base of the staircase, smiling his own dazzling, and brainless, smile.

He wasn't Harry, of course – ardent, crusading Harry – but Harry would've hated this. Every last bit of it. Dear earnest Griff, better this way.

Lady Greengrass strode forth serenely to give her sister away. To a good man. To the _right_ man.

Life was good, in this best of all possible worlds.


	4. Margaret: And The Living Is Easy

She smiled. Warmly, sunnily, a tuneless hum on her thin lips.

It always seemed summer in Potter's Field. Tenants puttering over their gardens, tradesmen practicing old crafts. Like an 18th century theme park. Merrie Olde, and all that rot.

Muggle to her roots even as she twirled her wand between her fingers, she appreciated it in her own fashion. And it was quiet.

She liked quiet. There were few demands on her in the village, as reeve for the Potter-Black interests. A bit of a sinecure, really. But a quiet one.

Eyes flashing fever-bright in the gloom of the terrace, she reached for her wand holster. It was finally complete: the remaining leather needed arrived just the previous fortnight. She ran a possessive fingertip over the three strips of slightly different hues of beige, cured to a buttery softness, and giggled, discordantly.

She sheathed her wand with a careless flick.


	5. Harry: Into The Great Wide Open

The _Prophet_ article was two years old by the time he saw it, in a bookshop in Sodankylä. The proprietor had a bunch of "Inglits" literature, would he like it?

Harry was assiduously learning Finnish, but yes, he surely would: it was nice to read his own language now and then.

Daph looked like a queen in the wizarding photo, crowned with light. Good on her. They still met up every few years – he had the least possessive wife in the history of Wizardkind – but she had her world and he his. No regrets.

He brought the supplies on a backboard to the camp. New life filled the fleeting Lapp summer ... along with squishy ground underfoot.

Luna was in the open tent flap, stretching like a cat, her pale rose-tipped breasts enticingly bared. "Bring me anything, love?"

"Paper from home. Nothing much."

Laughing, she pulled her man into the tent.


	6. Neville: Silver Wands Upon His Chest

"UP, you horrible lot! Drop your cocks and grab your socks, move _move_ **move**!"

He slammed the baton against a stanchion, and it rang with a dull _clank_ that made the stragglers jump.

One stride over to Prachendra's cot, slow as usual. The baton jammed under her chin. "Ruddy glasshouse wallah, by Merlin's balls if you're the last one again I will make your lifelong suffering my daily delight! **MOVE**!"

The trooper duly moved.

Weird, really. Yesterday's owl from Dean said the usual: why wasn't he at Hogwarts teaching herbology? Everybody asked that.

But in the end, in the War, he had to be a soldier. He liked that. He **was** that. Plants were okay, but gardening was what he did as a kid.

Now he was a man, and Captain of the Hardcore. Only the stupidly reckless disrespected him.

None twice.

He hadn't thought of Draco Malfoy in four years.


	7. Qibah: The Merciful, The Lovingkind

It had been longer since the shivering being recalled its own name.

It was a thing. It was always told so. Rebellion meant punishment. Sullenness meant punishment. Displeasing the master meant punishment.

The heat was brutal, the land was worse, but it learned not to question. Asking questions meant punishment.

Being taught to please, that was the first lesson. No. Being taught to _submit_ was first. Pleasing came later. It was given a beautiful name, and came to accept it.

But it was still beautiful then. Now, aged by heat, worn by brutality, it was no longer. Unwanted, the master gave it to a servant, and the servant in turn to the barracks. When even the soldiers tired of it, it received a new name: Qibah. An unpleasant name meaning an unpleasant thing.

Now the ultimate discard, Qibah was on the hillside, naked, prone, and the jackals howled. Hungrily.

Insh'allah.


End file.
